How the gods act in the poem, and whether that excuses anyone.
The Odyssey opens on Olympus, with the gods discussing the fate of mortals. Gods intervene in the poem directly and often, and yet from the very first speech the poem insists that mortals remain accountable for their own choices. This lesson asks how the gods act, what fate allows, and whether divine involvement ever excuses anyone.
1.22 Poseidon away with the Ethiopians 1.26–41 Zeus on Aegisthus 1.37–43 Hermes’s warning 1.60–79 Poseidon’s grudge explained 1.96–105 Athene as Mentes 1.178–212 the conversation with Telemachus 1.272–279 the departure as a bird
Have your Book 1 workbook open alongside this page. Quotations on this page give the workbook’s own line numbers.
Greek religion has a huge cast. At the top sit the major Olympian gods, among them Zeus, Poseidon, Athene and Hermes, who rule over broad areas of life and hold real authority over each other and over mortals. Below them is a vast range of minor divine beings, such as nymphs, river-gods and local spirits, each with a far smaller sphere.
Calypso is a useful test case. She is genuinely divine, a nymph with real power: she can keep Odysseus on her island for seven years and offer him immortality. However, she is not an Olympian. She has no seat on Olympus, no authority over other gods and no say in the council that opens the poem. She counts as a god, but a minor one.
Greek gods are anthropomorphic. They look like exceptionally beautiful humans, feel real emotions, hold grudges, play favourites and argue, exactly like the mortals in the poem, except that they are immortal and vastly more powerful. This is worth stating plainly, because it is what allows a god like Poseidon to be genuinely petty without any contradiction. Pettiness is a human trait which the gods share on a larger scale.
| God | Who they are and what they do in Books 1–4 |
|---|---|
| Zeus | King of the gods. He delivers the poem’s opening statement on human responsibility and confirms Odysseus’s fated return. |
| Athene | Zeus’s daughter, goddess of wisdom and strategy, and Odysseus’s patron. She acts through disguise throughout Books 1–4. |
| Poseidon | Zeus’s brother and god of the sea. He holds a personal grudge against Odysseus for blinding his son Polyphemus. |
| Hermes | The messenger god. He carried Zeus’s warning to Aegisthus. |
| Calypso, Proteus | Minor sea divinities. Neither is an Olympian. |
Five terms do most of the work in any answer on the gods. Learn them precisely, because each has a meaning that is easy to blur.
Common mistake. Never write that a character “had no choice” because a god was involved. In almost every case in this topic the poem holds the human responsible alongside the divine explanation.
The Odyssey runs two explanatory systems side by side. Gods intervene directly and often, and at the same time the poem insists that mortals remain accountable for their choices. The two systems usually describe the same action from two angles, so that a single event can have a divine and a human explanation at once.
Moira means portion or share: the allotted span and shape of a life, including its ending. It is less a detailed script than a kind of cosmic accounting, the share that belongs to each person and cannot simply be handed to someone else. In Homer moira is usually a single, barely personified force, and its meaning is close to that of the related word aisa.
Common mistake. The familiar image of three named goddesses of fate, Clotho who spins the thread of life, Lachesis who measures it and Atropos who cuts it, belongs chiefly to the later poet Hesiod and does not appear in the Odyssey.
Fate works as a boundary on divine power. The gods can shape how and when something happens, but they cannot ordinarily decide whether it happens at all. Poseidon shows this precisely: Odysseus is fated to return, so Poseidon can only delay the homecoming and make it painful, and he has no power to cancel it.
Even Zeus’s relationship to fate is not entirely passive. In the Iliad he weighs two heroes’ lots of death on a golden scale, which is the image of a god who administers fate as well as obeying it. His confirmation of Odysseus’s return in Book 1 fits the same pattern, since in it Zeus actively guarantees an outcome that fate has already set.
Prophecy in the poem therefore reveals fixed outcomes. What stays open is the path, the suffering along the way, and the choices that mortals make.
Zeus opens the poem with what amounts to a manifesto for the whole work: mortals blame the gods too readily for suffering which is really the result of their own transgressions. 1.26–41
Zeus proves his point at once with Aegisthus, who was explicitly warned by Hermes not to murder Agamemnon or marry his wife, did both anyway, and was killed by Orestes. Every element of the case is designed to make the point: a prior warning, a free choice and a deserved consequence.
Remember. Hermes matters here more than students expect. Without a specific, delivered warning, Aegisthus could claim ignorance. The warning is what makes the example a fair test of Aegisthus, where otherwise it would be a trap.
Atē fits the same logic. Even where a god is said to send the ruinous folly, the poem does not treat that as removing responsibility. Atē explains why the choice felt inevitable, and the person under it still made the choice.
Hybris and nemesis frame the suitors. Eating Telemachus’s livestock for three years without permission is overreach, committed in the confident assumption that no consequence will ever arrive. The eagle omen in Book 2 is nemesis being signalled in advance.
Book 1 opens on Olympus and only then moves to Ithaca. The divine council is the main scene for this topic: it sets out the poem’s theology, explains why Odysseus is still away, and launches Athene’s plan. Athene’s visit to Telemachus then shows a god at work among mortals.
Odysseus is held by Calypso; every god pities him except Poseidon, who is away feasting with the Ethiopians while the others meet.
Zeus complains that mortals blame the gods for their own transgressions, and gives Aegisthus as the proof.
Athene raises Odysseus’s case. Zeus explains Poseidon’s anger over Polyphemus and says the gods will bring Odysseus home.
Hermes will go to Calypso, and Athene will go to Ithaca to encourage Telemachus to act.
Athene arrives in the form of a family friend and tells Telemachus that his father is alive.
Athene vanishes like a bird. Telemachus realises a god has been with him, and returns to the suitors changed.
Not even when the rolling seasons brought in the year which the gods had chosen for his homecoming to Ithaca was he clear of his troubles and safe among his friends. Yet all the gods pitied him, except Poseidon, who pursued the heroic Odysseus with relentless malice till the day when he reached his own country. Poseidon, however, was now gone on a visit to the distant Ethiopians … He had gone to accept a sacrifice of bulls and rams, and there he sat and enjoyed the pleasures of the feast.
Book 1, workbook lines 15–25
The opening lines therefore place fate and a divine grudge side by side: the outcome is settled, while a single god makes the path to it as hard as he can.
‘What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us, as the source of their troubles, when it is their own transgressions which bring them suffering that was not their destiny. Consider Aegisthus: it was not his destiny to steal Agamemnon’s wife and murder her husband when he came home. He knew the result would be utter disaster, since we ourselves had sent Hermes, the keen-eyed Giant-slayer, to warn him neither to kill the man nor to court his wife. … Yet with all his friendly counsel Hermes failed to dissuade him. And now Aegisthus has paid the final price for all his sins.’
Book 1, workbook lines 31–42
Every element of the case, the warning, the free choice and the deserved death, supports Zeus’s principle. The speech also sets up a parallel for the rest of the poem: the suitors, too, will be warned, and will choose to ignore it.
‘Nonsense, my child!’ replied the Gatherer of the Clouds. ‘How could I ever forget the admirable Odysseus? He is not only the wisest man alive but has been the most generous in his offerings to the immortals who live in the wide heaven. It is Poseidon, Sustainer of the Earth, who is so implacable towards him on account of the Cyclops, godlike Polyphemus, the most powerful of the Cyclopes, whom Odysseus blinded. … That is why, ever since Polyphemus was blinded, Poseidon the Earth-shaker has kept Odysseus in exile, though he stops short of killing him.’
Book 1, workbook lines 59–70
Zeus ends by proposing that the gods “contrive a plan to bring him home”, adding that Poseidon “will not be able to struggle on alone against the united will of the immortal gods” (workbook lines 70–73). Athene had opened this exchange by asking why Zeus was “at odds” with Odysseus (workbook line 58). Zeus’s answer separates Poseidon’s personal anger from the judgement of the gods as a whole.
‘… if it is now the pleasure of the blessed gods that the wise Odysseus shall return to Ithaca, let us send our Messenger, Hermes the Giant-killer, to the isle of Ogygia, so that he can immediately tell Calypso, the Nymph with the plaited tresses, of our unalterable decision that the patient Odysseus must now set out for home. Meanwhile I myself will go to Ithaca to instil more spirit into Odysseus’ son and encourage him to call the long-haired Achaeans to an assembly … After that I shall send him to Sparta and to sandy Pylos to seek news of his father’s return.’
Book 1, workbook lines 75–85
The plan shows divine help planned from the start to work through a mortal’s own actions. Athene proposes to go in disguise and encourage Telemachus, which leaves him responsible for what he does next.
She flashed down from the heights of Olympus, and on reaching Ithaca she took her stand on the threshold of the court in front of Odysseus’ house; and to look like a visitor she assumed the appearance of a family friend, the Taphian chieftain Mentes, bronze spear in hand.
‘… Now I am no seer or soothsayer, but I will venture on a prophecy to you which the immortal gods put into my mind. I am certain it will come true. Your father will not be exiled much longer from the land he loves so well, not even if he’s kept in iron chains.’
Book 1, workbook lines 92–96 and 177–180
This is patronage in action. The disguise also keeps Telemachus responsible: Athene supplies information and advice, and he still has to decide to act on it. She ends her advice by saying, “I leave the matter in your hands. Think over what I have said” (workbook lines 265–266).
The goddess spoke and the next moment she was gone, vanishing like a bird through a hole in the roof. In Telemachus’ heart she had implanted spirit and daring, and had brought the image of his father to his mind even more strongly than before. He felt the change and was overcome with awe, for he realized a god had been with him. Then, godlike himself, he rejoined the Suitors.
Book 1, workbook lines 278–283
His behaviour changes at once. He speaks to his mother and to the suitors with a confidence he did not have before, telling Penelope that “I am master in this house” (workbook line 314) and announcing to the suitors that he will call an assembly (workbook lines 322–332). Divine help and human choice operate together in the same scene, which is double motivation in action.
A fair account should acknowledge a real tension. The gods are shown as personally motivated and sometimes petty, as Poseidon is, and yet the poem also insists on a coherent moral order in which mortals are justly held responsible. Whether these two pictures sit together comfortably is a genuinely debated question.
A stronger reading also notices who delivers the manifesto. Zeus’s speech conveniently shifts blame away from the gods, and it is spoken by the king of the gods himself. Whether the poem intends that irony or simply presents Zeus’s view as correct is worth weighing in an essay, and you should not assume either answer.
Worth noticing. The two sides of this tension appear in the same council. Zeus states a moral principle about Aegisthus, and a few lines later explains that Poseidon is keeping Odysseus in exile out of anger over his son.
These are positions for you to test against the text. Decide how far the text supports each one, and mark your verdict.